Centre for Comparative Modernities

Postgraduate Workshop Series

Autumn Term 2025 Term Card

Encountering Modernity in Literature

Session 1: Literary Translation of Modernity [28 October 2025]

Between the Shiren and the Playwright: Misrepresenting Shakespeare in the Formation of Modern Chinese Drama

Anthony Zhang, Durham University

Observing Modernity: Sir Syed Ahmed’s Urdu Travel Writing as Method

Abdul Sabur Kidwai, King’s College London

Session 2: Modernity, Post-Coloniality, and Mythical Narratives [4 November 2025]

Global Modernity Through the Smokey Mirror: Survivals and Metamorphosis of A Trickster God

Alonzo Loza Baltazar, IIEstéticas/UNAM, Mexico

When Ulysses Meets Nedjma: A Dialogue Across Modernities

Omar Harem, Maghnia University Centre, Algeria

Session 3: Rediscovering Identity in the Modern World [18 November 2025]

‘Her Long Blanks and Darknesses of Abstraction Were Polish’, or: Where Are the Poles in Modernism?

Juliette Bretan, University of Cambridge

Reenchanting modernity: Love, Sufism, and Secularity

Çiğdem Buğdaycı, Boğaziçi University, Turkey